“May be utilised as a printer connected to a PC with daisies!” This is a reference to the parallel port on the back of the Nakajima All AE355:

Interestingly, the AE 355 is closer in its feel and sound to a Selectric than the IBM 6715 is.

For a start, it has the same washing machine-like hum, and also has very tactile and Selectric-like spherical (double shot) key tops – which are very different to the springy cylindrical (dye-sub) key tops on the IBM 6715 (which, by the way, still holds top spot as my number one wedge to type on).

The only problem I have with the AE 355 is the fact that it’s quite noisy – but on the plus side, you definitely know you’re using a typewriter – and not a bad one at that!

Not really all that tough. Honeywell Multics was 9-bit, and I assume the GCOS operating system was as well as they both ran on 36-bit hardware. Yup, they had an extra bit per byte! The alternative would have been earlier, variable-wordsize machine, such as the Honeywell 200 which used – get this – punctuation bits to end words! (Not kidding.)

…and I should point out, to complete my off-topicness, that there were also 36-bit processors where they used six-bit bytes! I had the misfortune of using CDC’s NOS/BE operating system which represented lowercase characters as the two-character sequence , e.g. “H^e^l^l^o W^o^r^l^d”. That’s why natural language text used twice the expected disk space. 😐

crazy! still, I expect it’s far easier to pick up an old Tandy Model 100 that works and has a basic word processor installed than to find a functional Honeywell Multics. I’m pretty sure I’ve never laid eyes on one. (:

So very pleased there’s such bounteous enthusiasm for these things but this talk of bits in a typewriterly context sends apocalyptic shivers down my spine. Don’t tell me things ever caught on, or worse, evolved. Happy World Typewriter Day Steve 🙂